Researchers from NASA Goddard’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office ran a simulation of the atmosphere that captured how winds whip aerosols around the world. Such simulations allow scientists to better understand how these tiny particulates travel in the atmosphere and influence weather and climate. This visualization shows how dust and sea salt swirl inside cyclones, carbon bursts from fires, sulfate streams from volcanoes. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Effective Strategies for Teaching Systems Thinking

Several effective strategies for teaching systems thinking have been identified by Cutting Edge and InTeGrate workshop participants, including using computer modeling, an inquiry-based approach, and role-playing. Other strategies include:

Concept maps are a helpful way of seeing components of a system and information flows among components.

STELLA is an easy-to-use modeling program that allows students to explore quantitative relationships. Faculty at the 2012 workshop found that:

Using STELLA, quantitative relationships are applied rather than abstract and students can grasp the sign and the scale of these relationships without having to do complex math. This can help with math phobia.

Working with STELLA provides a means to teach quantitatively, and in a way that can be applied to specific questions and processes.

STELLA can be useful for introducing systems thinking to undergraduates and non-science majors (The use of STELLA as an experiment with freshman and sophomores resulted in the surprising outcome that students found it to be an empowering experience.)

STELLA can be used in a scaffolded manner. For example, it can be used to introduce systems thinking and to prepare students for a more quantitative approach.

Using Aldo Leopold's 'Odyssey', students can trace the journey of 'x' as the systems it encounters during its journey (such as the carbon cycle, trophic levels, hydrologic systems), having students diagram these systems as represented in Leopold's work.

Dramatic shoreline erosion and large overwash deposits along Dauphin Island following Hurricane Katrina. The image illustrates how barrier islands "rollover" and migrate landward during a severe storm surge. Barrier islands also migrate landward due to sea level rise, thus human settlements on barrier islands are vulnerable to both long term climate-driven impacts and short term storm damage.

Provenance: Image courtesy of the US Geological SurveyReuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Why Teach Systems Thinking?

Systems thinking is particularly well-suited to teaching about the complex challenges that lie at the intersection of Earth systems and human interactions. Topics such as climate change, energy, population dynamics and resource use benefit from a systems-based approach.

Complex problems are multidimensional. Both the problem and the solutions cut across multiple disciplines and "spheres."

Students tend to prefer simplified, black and white explanations which may be only partially accurate. A systems approach can introduce complexity in an elegant, conceptual way that students can appreciate.

Encouraging students to think from a systems point of view can encourage creative problem solving outside the usual discipline-based channels.

A systems approach is useful for examining interdependencies. This is especially important for societal challenges where many variables are changing, which affects other variables. The interactions of these variables are key to predicting the future. This is all the more important when changes have the potential to trigger positive feedback mechanisms.

Making informed decisions, as individuals and a society, requires an understanding of the complexity of the systems that make up our planet.

Opportunities to Strengthen Systems Thinking in Your Classroom

Systems thinking is prevalent across the curriculum, especially with regard to sustainability issues. Even if you don't explicitly call it systems thinking, you can always make connections and point them out to your students. Simple examples of systems (predator-prey relationships, ice-albedo feedback) can be taught in general education courses to underscore the prevalence of systems in everyday life. In upper-level courses, you can use systems thinking to teach mathematics and quantitative reasoning. And you can always work with other faculty in your department to integrate systems thinking across your curriculum, or with faculty in other departments to integrate systems thinking across campus.

The Earth and Mind II special volume has a section about teaching systems, which includes 7 papers about aspects of teaching systems thinking in the geosciences, including complex systems, weather systems, geodynamic systems, modeling, and more.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. Chelsea Green Publishing. This book describes how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life

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Provenance

Image courtesy of the US Geological Survey

Reuse

This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.